shadow IT

“What IT people call shadow IT..what other people call getting work done.”

-Jeff Gelb, Director of Technical Strategy at Pearson

Getting work done is what people are paid for. IT exists to provide tools, platforms, levers, force multipliers, accelerators. No one invests in IT to create inhibitors to the work that needs doing. But where there’s shadow IT, you have a very strong signal that that’s exactly what is going on.

The good: people very motivated to get things done The bad: IT not a part of things getting done The ugly: disintermediation, loss of confidence in IT

Despite all the hand waving that goes on about this, it’s not so bad. This is an opportunity for IT to reconsider not just how, but why, it does what it does.